Call for papers/ publication

When New York looks Scientific Committee: Claire Bernardi, Chief Curator - at the School of Paris (1930-1950) Paintings, Musée d’Orsay; Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, Professor of Reception, rereadings, Digital Humanities at the University of Geneva; and appropriations Scarlett Reliquet, Cultural Programme Officer at the Musée d’Orsay and Online Conference the Musée de l’Orangerie; Monday, November 29, 2021 / Tuesday, November 30, 2021 Pierre Wat, Professor at the University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. On the occasion of the exhibition Chaïm Soutine/Willem de Kooning, painting embodied Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, September 15, 2021 - January 10, 2022

The dialogue that the Musée de A new generation of historians has Unlike Surrealism, whose l’Orangerie has chosen to establish globalized its sources and questioned contributions to the American art scene between the School of Paris painter the binary model that constitutes the have been widely documented Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943) and center/periphery alternative. They have (Paris-New York, Surrealism in Exile), the American Abstract Expressionist relied less on monographic and focused we do not currently have an inventory of Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), affords approaches, and have decentered their the contributions of European figurative researchers the opportunity to explore purpose. These works show, as far as art, as united, albeit artificially, under the impact on the then-nascent our subject is concerned, that the New the banner of the “School of Paris” to American Abstract Expressionism York School did not “triumph” before American Abstract Expressionism. The movement by the art produced by the mid-1960s, and that its “autonomy” contributions to this colloquium will help European artists living in Paris during must be put into perspective. to define its contours. the interwar period. Like Soutine – whose expressive force of painting This colloquium aims to revisit marked the post-war generation of the sources to better understand this artists and whose work was particularly history and encourages candidates visible in the United States between to participate in a review of what was the 1930s and 1950s – other European visible of European art in the United artists, painters and sculptors, settled States before 1950, in terms of in Paris and associated with the eclectic exhibitions, journals, and private movement of the School of Paris, also collections. played a decisive role in the emergence of what has been called American This colloquium aims to examine Abstract Expressionism. the conditions of the birth of American Abstract Expressionism in its After long decades of asserting relationship to the European, and the “triumph” of the New York School particularly French, figurative tradition, and its autonomy, a historiographical in the specific context of the Second review seems not only possible but also World War, both before and after desirable. The univocal account of the United States entered the war at the independence of American art from the end of 1941, based on individual Surrealism seems to have been artistic trajectories. the “dominant” explanation. Entire movements and their circulation may have been ignored, considered irrelevant, and deemed “local” or Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), “peripheral.” Woman Accabonac, 1966, huile sur toile, 200,7 x 89,2 cm États-Unis, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art Digital Image © Whitney Museum of American Art, The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Adagp, Paris 2021 Historical context Contributions To understand the direct and indirect consequences on American art of these Before 1941 In order to capture the diversity of the exiled artists and to assess their From the 1900s until the dawn of the trajectories and identities of European visibility, contributions are expected on: artists settled in the United States, First World War, a whole generation of 3. The repercussions of these and their differentiated contribution artists came from all over Europe to exchanges on public and private to the American scene, papers are study, work and live in Paris. They American collections: exhibitions, expected on: formed what is conveniently but not notable acquisitions in European and unambiguously called “The School of 1. The life and artistic conditions French art in particular, during the Paris” (A. Warnod, 1925) – a “school” of the French artists in the United States period concerned (before and after with no real unity of style or community who had been part of the School of Paris 1941), comparative studies of the of shared learning. Most of the artists adventure and thereafter exiled to the American market, and the presence of fled from social, political or religious United States: names of the settled French galleries, famous sales, ratings, situations that were almost always artists (quantitative and qualitative and prices. oppressive, making it impossible for evaluation of their experiences), location them to practice their art freely. During of European communities in the United For example: The exhibition “Painting the interwar period, all of them brought States (East and West Coast), famous in France, 1939 - 1946,” organized in an unprecedented dynamism to the studios (nature of teaching, attendance), 1946 by the Association Française Parisian art scene, essentially centered and the particular situation of European d’Action Artistique at the Whitney Museum in New York, which then in the Montparnasse district, where they Jewish artists and their relationships traveled to many American cities. would remain. Exiled, uprooted and in with the American Jewish community. search of a new artistic dynamism, each of these foreign artists brought the For example: Originally from Lithuania, strength of their personal destiny to a Jacques Lipchitz moved to Paris in 1909, Paris that had become a world city, in a where he attended the Académie des Contributions must be sent before th France experienced as a land of Beaux-Arts and then the Académie July, 15 , 2021 in the form of a freedom, especially for Jews. The rapid Julian. His sculpture was bought in 1922 paragraph of 500 words, accompanied success of some of them triggered a by Dr. Barnes, who commissioned him by a short CV to the following address: wave of xenophobia, often anti-Semitic, to create bas-reliefs for his property in [email protected] particularly in France. At the same time, Merion, Pennsylvania. His first important Once the Scientific Committee has made solo exhibition was held in 1937 in New the United States saw the opening of the its selection, a message will be sent York (Brummer Gallery). He emigrated great museums we know today and the to you confirming that your proposal to the United States in 1941 and has been accepted and informing you building of the famous collections that became an American citizen in 1948. of the terms of participation and would be housed within them, often at The MoMA organized a retrospective publication. the initiative of women. The long- for him in 1954. standing complex American artists had about Europe was in the process of To examine the ways and mechanisms dissipating, while a social realist art of appropriation and rereading of This colloquium has received the generous sought to unite artists and viewers. European art by American artists, support from the Terra Foundation for American Art contributions are expected on: After 1941 2. The reception by American artists Only a part of these Paris-based themselves, critics, collectors of French European artists went into exile in the art during the interwar period and after United States in the 1930s, fleeing the the war: American artists’ written and economic crisis and the prevailing anti- The exhibition is organized jointly with oral statements about the legacy of communism, leaving behind the quarrels the Barnes Foundation of Philadelphia, European art affiliated with “The School surrounding abstract art. They were which holds a large number of Soutine’s works. of Paris” (original unpublished or joined, starting in 1941, by those fleeing They were collected by Barnes on the advice published sources; diaries); publications of Paul Guillaume, who was at the origin of the anti-Jewish laws (October 4, 1940). on French art in the United States the Musée de l’Orangerie collection. This was the case for Marc Chagall (number, type), survey of American (1941-48), Ossip Zadkine (1941-45), criticism on the subject (positions of Moïse Kisling (1940-46), Jacques major names), critical theories on Lipchitz (1940-1963) and Mané-Katz notions of figure and formlessness, (1941-45), but not for Chaïm Soutine, painting of the “flesh,” and on gestural Chana Orloff, Michel Kikoïne or Amedeo painting practice. Modigliani. Almost all of them had their work exhibited in American galleries and For example: In his article entitled “The museums, commented on and reviewed Fall of Paris,” art critic Harold Rosenberg in magazines and newspapers, (1906-1978) described the shift of commissioned and sold to collectors the artistic center from Paris to New and acquired by American museums. York (Partisan Review. December 1940). He is also credited with identifying and coining the name “Action Painting” for the first time in 1952. But we have remained wrongly confined to his narrative. Other available sources would allow us to widen the focus.